Childhood

Jai Shri Raawan
Dear Raawan uncle

Ever heard your grandparent tell you that how they strived for even the basic necessities in life. That they walked miles to go to study. When we were kids we all had our share of lengthy Satsang given to us by our elders telling us how they survived in their life with all the things they had in life. And I thought to myself that I would never do that to my children. I would never give them this crap. But then I am Raawan and I must pass on this crap to the little Raawans all around so that they can pass it on to the future generations.

Now that I am in later part of thirties, I feel compelled to convey my emotion-filled-envy Raawanistically to you guys and gals under thirty. You have got it so easy guys. You live a life, which you think is six inches above the ground. And it is for you because of all the amenities you have. You use them and not cherish them. And Raawans of my age would most certainly agree with me. I know.

We had TV alright but it was plain Black and White. It used to be a privilege to own and watch TV. It had tuner alright but had only one channel to surf, and thank god it was only one channel on the air because if we needed to surf the channels we had to go to the idiot box to twist its tuner dial because there were no remotes. You hear that brats, no remotes. We had to wait whole freaking week to get a dose of cartoon, and that too it lasted only half an hour. If we needed to see the music video we had to wait for a program aired only on Wednesdays and Fridays and it was called “Chitrahaar”, needless to say it lasted for half an hour too. There were virtually no sports on the TV. We had to watch the Bharatnatyam while waiting for “Hum Log”. Not Easy…

We never had Playstations and Xboxes with 3D graphics, high resolution, life-like-gaming devices. We had Atari which had limited number of games, and with limited levels and it had only one screen, throughout. You could never win. The only thing we had life like in the game was that it gets harder and harder and faster and faster until you die. Not Easy…

We had phones also but those were stationary ones and came with the round dial. No walk and talk. Getting a girls phone number was a different ball game altogether. Even if you have got it, fairer were the chances that you end up talking to her mother, which in weirdest of imaginations also cannot be described as a romantic conversation. It often posed a health hazard. There was no call waiting and missed call services. Hence you would never know who missed you. It could have been an emergency call from your girlfriend for telling you that her father has left home with an axe to kill you. But you missed it and all she is left with is a busy tone and a dead boyfriend. We didn’t have fancy caller ID thingy also. When you picked up the phone you would never know who it could be. Hence you could have picked a call accidently from your teacher, principal, girlfriend’s father slash mother or deranged brother. You just had to take your chances. Not Easy…

If we wanted to send somebody a message, it was called telegram, and people dreaded getting it and in some cases even sending it. It could have contained information of somebody’s death or an unwanted arrival of a long lost chacha’s-son’s-saala. Our messages sent to our girlfriend often landed through glass window (breaking them) in her mother’s or sister’s hand. Not in girls handset called cellular phone. My personal best is four windows in a day. Not Easy…

We never had computers we actually had to write our own Homework not type it. We did not Googled for information; we had to rely on what we listened from family and friends. We didn’t have internet. Actually internet has made your life much more easier than ours. We had to write our mails not type them. It usually required a week for a mail to reach from Delhi to Jalandhar and often got lost in travel. We had to post our mail not send it and we had to walk almost half a kilometer to do that. Not Easy…

We did not download the songs. Ever heard of the word Radio, that’s what we used to call it before FM. We had to wait for the song to be played on Radio so that we could record it on a Cassette player, and RJs used to spoil them with their regular interruptions. There were no CD players, not even in cars. There used to be only 8-10 songs in each cassette, unlike 200+ songs on a CD. It had two sides and we had to eject the damn side A to listen to the side B. We never used to steal the music over internet; we walked to the nearest cassette vendor and stole the cassettes. Not Easy…

You guys have got it so easy these days that you would have lasted 10 minutes at the max in 1990 and before. The same would be the case with me living in Raawan uncle’s era. My suggestion to all you Little Raawans would be to “Cherish what you use” so that one day you can also say all of the above and better to your children.

Raawanistically yours
The 30 and above people…